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A Detailed Cross-Examination of Yesterday and Today's Best-Selling Platform Games

Hazards

A commonality throughout, is that all games begin with floor-based simplistic enemies.

The
2D games have a range of sentry, airborne, high-mounted,
projectile-based, projectile throwing and vertically travelling enemies
in the very first levels, and evolve and add to this throughout the
game.

Crash, Mario Sunshine, Jak and Daxter and Sonic Adventure, tend to keep things *much* safer
to begin with, restricting enemy types to those who are floor based
with only Sonic Adventure going so far as to add a projectile throwing
enemy and a few aggressive attackers in its first few minutes of
gameplay.

All games also have static environmental
hazards – spikes, blades, etc… - and bottomless pit Kill-zones as
standard, with the occasional game having a hazard that ‘contains’ and
surrounds the gameplay area – like a bottomless pit or an ocean you can
drown in or get eaten in.

Sonic is unique in that
it contains hazards related to the way the character interacts with the
environment’s shape. For instance, jumping on a sloped area – when in
the confines of inertia/momentum - could send you flying into a nearby
hazard - being as the angle of the slope relative to your speed alters
your trajectory and jump range significantly.

Mario
Sunshine and Jak and Daxter’s kill-zones don’t come in till later in
the game and it’s fair to say the majority of hazards in both titles –
at least within the first parts of the game - are enemy based, as
opposed to environmental and very minor in threat.

2006 Addition:
NSMB sticks to the simple enemy formula, even so far as simplifying it
slightly to have only shelled, bouncing and horizontally walking
enemies – no spiked ones. It now uses platforms as hazards too, with
some see-saw platforms causing you to fall to your death if stood on
for too long.

Score and Pick-Up Bonuses

Score
bonuses also seem to have declined in popularity over time with Mario
Sunshine, Crash and Jak and Daxter replacing score with finance and
Quota Token count.

Sonic Adventure however, has decided to keep a score feature, using it as a way to grade a player’s game-play performances.

Games
which don’t use a score system for unlocking areas or granting bonus
Quota tokens, tend to hide Quota tokens in HTR areas, or simply place a
sub-series of Quota tokens within a combination of standard, hidden and
HTR areas for the player to collect.

In simpler terms:

Older
systems choose to reward overall skill – using a score function to
reward the player with lives and extra pick-ups every time x points are
added to the total. In SMB’s case, other rewards are activated, based
on score performance – like secret bonus stages appearing for instance

Newer
systems choose to reward inquisitiveness, preferring to measure Quota
Token collection as a way of judging skill. This system relies heavily
on the player’s desire to find HTR areas and giving them unlockable
bonuses or extra lives/finance as a reward

2006 Addition:
NSMB combines both a quota token system and a skill system, with
exploration, experimentation and skilful gameplay all rewarded with
either a score bonus, Extra life or power-up

Mario
Sunshine used the new system in an arguably crude fashion, using three
different types of finance - merely different in colour, Quota amount
and in ease of discovery – as ways of unlocking further Unlock/Quota
tokens, which would then grant you access to later levels and game
events.